Infrastructure

Ottawa Hospital uses Aruba network for wireless

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Aruba Networks, Inc announced that The Ottawa Hospital has deployed an 802.11n wireless network based on the Aruba Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture to support more than 3,000 Apple iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.

Physicians and other healthcare professionals are using these devices to access electronic medical records and physician order entry systems at patients’ bedsides to facilitate decision-making and enhance patient interaction.

“The wireless network is perhaps the most critical infrastructure component that we have supporting all our applications, and is the primary means of network access for our physicians and other clinicians,” said Dale Potter, CIO for The Ottawa Hospital. “Our wireless networking infrastructure, based on the Aruba MOVE architecture, is absolutely mission critical. If the wireless network goes down, the hospital will stop. We have contingency plans, of course, but reliability was among the key considerations when we made the decision to go with Aruba.”

The Ottawa Hospital is the largest hospital in Canada for acute care. The hospital has 1,163 beds, 11,967 staff, 1,159 attending physicians, 3,886 registered nurses and registered nurse practitioners and 811 residents. The hospital’s wireless network covers their entire 12 million square foot campus. The process through which physicians gather and share information with patients and their families in clinical settings has long been open to improvement.

Doctors have traditionally depended on information stored on computers or in files far from the patients’ bedsides to conduct their daily rounds. Accessing this information was disruptive, inefficient or both, due to the lack of real-time access to lab test results, medical imaging and other information.

“With mobility, we’ve been able to go back to a pattern where the whole team moves as a group from patient to patient. We go from room to room and review each case, access information and make decisions with the patient or the family in the room,” said Dr. Glen Geiger, medical director and chief clinical information officer for The Ottawa Hospital. “That gives the patient a sense of control, and it is much more direct and collaborative than a group of doctors discussing their care in a conference room and then sending the interns to go explain it to the patients.”

The hospital provides iPads to staff physicians, iPhones to nurses and iPod touches to porters, security workers and housekeeping staff. The hospital began with a pilot program in November 2010 and has continued to expand the deployment based on its ongoing success.

“The scope and scale of iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch deployments at The Ottawa Hospital is trend-setting for delivering healthcare in the 21st century,” said Hitesh Sheth, chief operating officer at Aruba. “Innovative providers like The Ottawa Hospital are taking full advantage of mobility to be much closer to patients. We are delighted to be partnering with them.”